Wow we’ve got a big garden!

 

I feel at times, I may have made it much bigger than I can handle by myself, well, me and my trusty old Troy Built rototiller. Up and down the field we go, the machine wanting to go one way, me the other, tiller jumping and bucking with each unseen rock and hard spot. We have been in such a time crunch because of all the spring rain, the soil still hasn’t properly dried, so it hasn’t worked up as well as I would have liked. I spent all day yesterday tilling, and have the blisters to prove it. Today’s goal is to finish making the raised beds, no small task in itself, then add the plastic mulch, then the plants.

Sherry has been taking the baby chickens out to the yard while she works outside in the landscaping so they can get out of their brooder for awhile; they are getting a bit cramped in there. She dashes back to check on them every so often to do a head count. The chick round up after the days follys is the fun part. There’s nothing quite so frustrating as chasing tiny two-legged birds around a yard. But I have to say, it goes much smoother than one might expect. Sherry, as has been demonstrated, has a calming effect on beasts.

Lastly, let me tell you how my quail project is going. Remember, I have over a hundred quail eggs incubating at the moment. While they’re doing that, I’ve been building cages for them. I had finished the fourth cage this week and promptly ran over it with the Mini Truck. I wanted to cry! There is a lot of work and time that go into each one of those cages, I was proud and very glad to have them all finished, then catastrophe struck. I was moving the cages from under the carport, up the hill in the truck to their final destination. Just as I was finishing the journey, one of the cages snuck off of the stack before it had permission, and ended up under the front tire. There it lay, a crumpled ball of ½ by ½ “ galvanized wire, hardware cloth, and 26 gauge sheet metal. Oh the horror! My loving wife offered, “You can probably hammer it out,” even after having been witness to my sobbing and the mangled mess that lay beneath me and the tire. Bless her heart, it’s the only ointment she had for the pain, all she could come up with in light of the carnage that lay before her. But alas, there is no hope for this cage except perhaps as a donor for a new cage. Other than that slight setback, the quail scheme seems to be on track, eggs nestled in the humming incubators waiting for the day of transformation, which, by the way, should be the 30th of May.

I’m through talking, ---Matt

Garden Report

Hello all, there was a heavy frost this morning. I sure am glad I didn’t manage to get my summer crops out yet! Can you imagine trying to cover over ¼ acre of plants in plastic or bed sheets? Wow. I did see some gardens on the way home from work this morning that were not covered and I am sure they will not fare well. I have been complaining about all the rain but it did keep me from planting, so I will count it as a blessing from God.  

What garden we do have planted is doing well. The Mizuna looks good and also the lettuce mix is doing pretty well. The collard greens look great but I may have to put a row cover on them to stop any chewing that may have started from the bugs that haven’t good manners. The potato plants are starting to peek out from the soil. I have a whole bunch of garlic plants that I bought from a plant sale on Saturday and do hope to get them in today. I know, I know garlic is supposed to be planted in the fall but I thought I would give it a go since there is a lot of growth on them already this spring and they were only a couple of bucks.

The quail cages and racks are nearly complete so we will be ready for quail babies after they hatch. Things seem to be going fine in the incubators. Hoping the new fence comes soon—I’ve ordered it through an online company. The chicks are getting too big for their brooders and they are starting to fuss about it. Plus we are tired of cleaning them. I sure hope we can get to raise a couple of pigs this year but time is becoming of the essence.

In the meantime, here’s a lovely recipe I want to share with you. It’s a glaze I use on salmon filets, and we all love it in the Gunter house. You might like it, too!

Ginger glaze for Salmon:

• ¼ cup brown sugar
  
• 2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard
  
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger root.
  

Mix all 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Brush salmon with said ingredients. Let stand in the fridge for about an hour, it can be less if you’re pressed for time. Grill or broil about four minutes a side. Please, please, don’t over-cook your Salmon! Enjoy!  

Check back often , Matt

Quail Eggs Are Here

All of the quail eggs have arrived this last week--30 Button quail and 106 Cortunix. We have them all in the incubators. We had to buy a new incubator to fit the extra eggs that were sent. Sherry just couldn't bring herself to dispose of them, so we had to buy a new incubator to include them all in the hatching process.

The other good news is that I have just about finished the rack for the quail cages. There should be quail at Gunter's Gourmet Garden on the 30th of May. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by and see them!

Thursday, May 14 was my birthday. Sherry and I had a wonderful lunch at Wasabi on 82nd, a sushi place in Castleton, Indiana. They do a nice job with their fish; we would recommend the restaurant as one of our top picks. 

Catch up soon, Matt

Poultry Pics

New turkeys, new chicks, and quail eggs ready for the incubator.

Tilling Day

Tuesday was tilling day here at the Gunter swamp farm. Matty rented a tiller for the tractor and tilled the garden plots.

We've been behind on this task because of all the rain we've had this spring. It's a good thing we managed to till yesterday, because it's raining AGAIN today! Thankfully, I also managed to plant the rest of the onions.

Matty plowed an area for the "melon patch" as well as the large garden plot where the main garden plants will go.

In between tilling, we visited a garden shop and Rural King, and came home with 2 new turkey chicks. They've joined the 8 little yellow puff balls we purchased last week on sale at the Tractor Supply Store. So our poulty total is now at 28.

Matty also ordered 100 quail eggs to start incubating. Oh, the insanity!

Lastly, here are some pics of the spring plants coming into their own.

I miss my Mother especially today, Mothers Day. So much could be said, yet so little is. I wrote this poem for Moms everywhere.
Moms
Dads are great, they teach their boys how to be tough,
How to make a good deal, look a man in the eye with nerves of steel.
The power of a handshake and the deal that it seals,
he teaches you to go to the top of the monkey bars to reach for the stars,
about chances and danger and girls and fast cars.
Dads do this with the greatest of ease, its in there DNA it’s what I believe.
But mom she’s the one, the one I want to please.
She will kiss you and hold if you skin your knees.
She’s there when you’re sad, happy if you’re glad,
loves you even if you’re bad.
Mom teaches you patience, to be gracious, about kindness and care,
She will lick her hand after a sigh of despair, plaster them down, each wild hair.
She’s got candy and gum and things that are fun,
pencils and puzzles, and at times, wishes for a muzzle.
It’s all there in a big, old purse, more luggage than bag,
it’s too heavy to carry, it needs to be dragged.
She will go without, always putting you first,
she needs new shoes but she thinks you need them worse.
It’s the kind of love the Bible speaks of, Agape’s the word,
it’s love without ending, not even deserved.
She loves you like God does, that’s the way it should be,
That’s where she got it and she gave it to me.

Thanks Moms! I love you, Mathew Gunter

First up in the blog today, please pray for our family in Southern Illinois; their area was hit by a very heavy storm on Friday with lots of wind-related damage.
Okay, now for the garden-related stuff… Sherry and I got the potatoes planted this past week; six 50 foot rows of fingerlings, Yukon gold, and reds. The rain was close behind so we still haven’t gotten the onions planted. My hope is that since the major part of them are cipollini onions and we want them small, they will be all right if we get them in soon. We really do need to catch a break in the weather soon as I would like to get the main season crops in next week….
I have finally received our new incubator this week and it looks much nicer than the one I returned after the first hatchings (that thing wouldn’t hold the temperature steady and was especially loud). So now that I have the new incubator, I will be ordering Cortunix Quail eggs soon and start incubating. I have three of the four new quail cages finished and need to make a rack on which to stack them. We will have Quail babies before you know it; they only take eighteen days to hatch. They mature and start laying eggs at eight weeks of age. How fun is that? You know what this means, don’t you? You’ll have to stop by for a quail egg omelet.
Speaking of chickens, we stopped by Tractor Supply (the store) on Thursday and found pullet chicks on sale for 99 cents, so we bought 8. So now we have a grand total of 26 chicks. The new pullets are golden yellow and look like little puffballs. The older chicks we hatched ourselves are growing really fast now. We had to separate them this week to give them more room in the brooder boxes. They also moved out onto the enclosed porch this past week, which has made Sherry happy because they were stirring up peat moss dust all over the downstairs … plus, they’re really smelly.
As an extra adventure this week, I took Sherry to the Strawtown Auction and we watched people bid on livestock and such. They had everything from horses and cows, to goats and pigs, chickens and ducks, even rabbits and potbellied pig babies. Sherry was more fascinated by the interesting people attending the auction than the auction itself, I think. I must admit, the attendees are quite something to behold. Maybe next time we’ll bid on something ourselves… as long as it fits into the back of a Scion!
So that’s how things went this week on the Gunter farm.

The "Sunken" Garden: Raised Bed Gone Awry

Here's a pic of the disaster in the raised bed I blogged about earlier. As you can see, the middle of the box gave out, and it looks like an earthquake hit.

Here's what's happening on the farm today:
Time to save the raised bed; we had a small catastrophe this weekend. Our elevated raised bed collapsed in the middle after succumbing to the heavy rain load we have received these last forty days. Today is rescue day. I am going to attempt to move large quantities of plants, with their respective dirt clumps, into temporary raised beds to finish growing them off. I'll be using Rubbermaid long, flat totes as surrogate beds for this tactile exchange. Since these seedlings are our spring plants, I need to finish growing them and get them harvested. The plants include Baby Bok Choy, a couple of types of lettuces, and Mizuna. They will be done as soon as we role into warmer weather, which we hope starts consistently showing up this week!
Time to order fencing. The baby chicks are growing up fast, and will need their "coop" shortly. As much fun as we've had watching them indoors in their brooding box, we'll eventually have to move them outdoors, unless Sherry changes her mind and allows them as pets downstairs. Since that's not likely, the plan is to let them roost in one of our smaller barns and use electric fencing to keep the predators out.
It's a busy day here on the swamp farm!

Chick Pics

Here are a couple of the chicks posing for pics.

They were somewhat cooperative, but a little shy.

Much to my chagrin, they pooped a great deal during the photo session. Thank goodness I had an old rug below them!

I'll have to try recording video next time so you can get the full effect of sound along with the pictures. These guys are really quite vocal for being so small.

If they didn't poop so much, I'd be more tempted to cuddle with them. They're very warm and fuzzy, and some of them are extremely curious.

These chicks are now almost two weeks old and growing fast.

Here I am, the morning after one of the best days of my life. To be sure I have had many, many best days of my life, but this was a foodie “died-and–gone-to-heaven” kind of day. Sherry and I went to the Saraga International Grocery in Indianapolis. It’s located in an old K-mart building near Layfayette Square Mall. They have things there that I have not seen before, and trust me I have spent a great deal of my life not letting any food item go by unnoticed. The more strange something seems to us, the more I want to know about it. That’s not to say I will eat anything and everything, but I at least want to know about it.
I was familiar with lots of things in the store, but didn’t know we could get them this close to home. For the most part, all the fish and meats looked fresh and handled well. I think the store could be a bit off-putting to some as it is not a flashy, spotless mega-mart backed by a trillion dollars. But it was clean and the shelves well stocked. They have an amazing fish counter with young men and women at the ready to cut and clean your fish any way you would like it, and at no extra cost I assume. We are talking a huge variety of fish and shellfish here, even flying fish roe for Sushi rolls.
The gadgets and housewares department “had me at hello,” to borrow from Jerry Maguire. There were pots and pans so big you could park a 1966 VW Beatle in them, and strainers just as big. There were tea pots, hot pots, tea sets, cups, spoons, saki sets, knives, woks (real woks, not fake ones like those sold at Wally World), huge cutting boards and great stirring spoons the size of boat oars! If I am lying I am dying, those giant spoons were as big as boat oars. And the meats, wow--anyone up for some hogs head stew? What about a goat or beef head for that matter? I have been hankering for some chicken’s feet and theirs looked very fresh. The meat department also features ears, tongues, liver and lungs. Everything looked good and all major farm animals were represented. I was very impressed by the meat that was sliced thin and rolled up ready to be used in hot pot.
The canned goods aisles were great fun and took a bit of time to get through as I picked up and looked at all the things I had and hadn’t seen before. A lot of the same things are on different aisles in the store, but categorized as different regions of the world.
The produce section was plentiful and well stocked with many types and species being available. It’s the same old story, though, with fresh produce—it just can’t be fresh enough when it is being grown and trucked in from who knows where. They had Thai and Indian eggplant and a few other vegetables that we grow here at Gunter’s Gourmet Garden, but sadly they were very old and I wouldn’t dare sell such poorly treated veggies to my customers. I don’t blame the store operator, I am sure they wish they could get it fresher.
So if you get a chance to stop in Saraga International grocery over on the westside, just overlook the broken glass on the floor (they will pick that up won’t they?) and have a look around. It’s also my understanding that they are doing some things to spiff the place up a bit. So get in there before it loses its charm. It’s located at 3605 Commercial Drive Indianapolis, IN (I got the address off of a big bag of chipotle chilies I found there for $5.00).
See you soon, Matt

More rain. I started to build the quail cages today for our jumbo quail enterprise. I can already taste the gourmet quail eggs fried sunny side up with a rasher of bacon. Speaking of which, who decided that three or less strips of bacon a rasher make? I submit to you that the amount of bacon served should correspond with the weight of the other breakfast meats being served. I should start a movement—more bacon per serving! Who’s with me?